The purpose of this post is to elaborate on a practical way to achieve disciplined thinking by relating it to some personal epiphanies. If you often find yourself giving into bad habits (unable to quit cannabis, randomly drunk texting an ex LTR every now and then, meeting girls just to routinely fall under the spell of oneitis, etc) then hopefully some of what I’ve learned about myself in the recent past can help.

Personally, my greatest struggles with discipline have been 1) quitting cannabis, 2) eating properly to compliment my lifting, and 3) constantly wondering if all women are REALLY like that/knowingly chasing oneitis. Here is what I’ve learned about myself in trying overcome the aforementioned obstacles:

  • 1) Discipline and sheer will power are NOT the same thing. The difference is that discipline is implied to be a routine and a constant part of life, whereas will power typically only applies to a specific situation. Example: I lack discipline because last night and the night before I ate 3 bags of gummy worms after the gym, but today I exercised will power by eating healthy.

  • 2) The single greatest enemy of discipline is rationalization. It sounds obvious, but in application it can actually be kind of tricky to recognize. Rationalizations are logical explanations that we give to ourselves about why we behaved a certain way, even when those explanations aren’t appropriate.

    • a) One of my best friends is a cigarette smoker. Having quit smoking cigarettes myself, I’d occasionally ask him, “Why don’t you just quit?” or “You know you should quit, right?” Instead of him replying with, “Yeah, I know. I want to quit,” he’ll always reply, “I know that it’s bad for me, but honestly I just don’t want to quit right now.” I slept on this for a long time, but it’s actually very significant. Maybe discipline isn’t having the sheer will power to do something difficult or uncomfortable; maybe instead, discipline is having the courage to honestly admit to yourself which thing you actually want more.
    • b) Going back to my greatest struggle of the past 5 years, quitting cannabis, I can now see that I always lied to myself about it. “I want to quit because I know that’s what I need.” This is pretentious and held me back for quite a long time. I knew what I needed to do, but it wasn’t what I wanted to do, and pretending that I wanted it just because I needed it left me in a state of denial for quite a long time. Had I been more honest with myself, perhaps I would have been successful earlier on. Instead of saying “I want to quit because I know that’s what I need,” I should have said, “I don’t want to quit. I really want to keep getting high. But do I really want it more than my desire to socialize? Do I want it more than I want to get good grades, and go to class regularly?”

I hope this post isn’t too vague or ambiguous. Perhaps some could offer their input on the matter. Discipline is an important concept in my life because it’s something I struggle with, but am getting much better at. I think we need to be realistic with ourselves about what we want before we can expect self-improvement to find its way into our lives.